Feedback

NooBBQ · May 2008

I have been reading some feedback in the regular forum, and while I do not like the presentation of the feedback, nor do I believe it is in the right forum, they do reflect some of my sentiment.

The forum is hard to navigate, and some posts, flush off the front page w/o getting due attention. I know there is a view to see the latest posts, but this is not the default view, and frankly it is hard to navigate. Also, while I subscribe to many posts, it is somewhat quirky to get to my subscriptions.

I belong to some other forums that have much more traffic than this one, but are easier to navigate. Some use vBulletin, others use SMF or JOOBLA.

Some observations (w/ the disclaimer that some of these might already exists, I just don't know about them:
* it is all one big pile, serious concerns, forum checks, general shooting the ****, it all lands on a big pile. Maybe splitting things into: (Social lounge, technical, recipe discussions, good buys, Help, trading post) would help this.
* Default view to be latest active threads, and sort those by time of the last post instead of time of the original post.
* easy way to get to subscriptions
* a selection in the main navbar that searches for all new posts since last visit.
* in profile views, an option to seacrh for all posts by this user and/or all posts started by this user.

I realize some of this is already been discussed/decided upon/acted upon, I apologize if that was the case. Overall I enjoy this forum very much and appreciate everyone's hard work.

nooBBQ

WMK · May 2008

nooBBQ,

Many of our members prefer the "classic" view which is not available in any other forum. We added it to this one; so, we resist switching to one of the other ones in favor of adding features over time to this one.

I agree that the "last25" or "latest posts" needs to be easier to use. In particular I don't like the way that it requires a visit to the forum list page first.

Many of our members don't like the idea of dividing everything up into separate "rooms" or categories. The prefer the more social nature of this forum. We did add the "Forum Feedback" category to permit the main forum to focus more on cooking related issues.

At some point, well will investigate again adding an index view (other than last25) that shows "all" (or perhaps selected) categories so that those that like it that way can keep what they have while others, like yourself, that might prefer more focused categories, can have what they want also. One problem I see with many categories, is the, "where to post this", question. E.g. if you have a file for automobile stuff, and another for insurance, where do you file auto insurance?

There is an option to order threads by latest response, click the "Active threads first" link at the top of the index. This shows threads in the same order as "last25". Of course, some of our members don't like this option because it makes threads "bounce" around -- that's why it's an option.

Searching for new posts since last visit sounds like a good idea to me. We'll look into implementing it; and, the same for searching for all posts or threads by a specific user.

Thanks for your input,

NooBBQ · May 2008

Thanks for the reply,

One additional remark: it would be handy to be able to select "subscribe to all post in which one replies/posts" as an option in your profile.

nooBBQ

Feedback

Comments

Categories